There are a wide variety of hand tools available for performing various operations on electrical connectors to effect termination of terminals in the connectors with electrical cables such as insulated electrical cables wherein the terminals effect an insulation displacement type termination.
One of the most common types of hand tools of the character described is of a pliers-type tool for effecting a scissors-type motion between a pair of pivotally connected handles. A problem with such pliers-type tools is that they either operate with their closing jaws or dies moving in arcuate paths versus linear paths or complicated toggle arrangements are used and which require numerous parts to convert the arcuate movement of the scissors-type handles to linear movement of the jaws. Other non-pliers type hand tools are available but those tools, again, employ an excess number of parts, are excessively bulky and are not easily handled.
There is a need for a simple, portable hand tool for applying a two-part electrical connector, the jaws or dies of the tool operating in a linear path, and which is simple to operate and/or manipulate. An example of such a need is in the area of terminating or applying flat ribbon cable which include a plurality of individually insulated electrically conductive wires attached to one another substantially in a plane through the use of an insulating web, such as of plastic material. In terminating such ribbon cable, a hand tool must apply uniform linear forces between opposing jaws or dies of the tool because of the substantial planar area of the cable to be terminated, i.e. in comparison to terminating a single or discrete wire. Of course, the invention is applicable to a variety of electrical cables wherein the advantages of the invention are of significance.